The Oscar-winning Songs Countdown: 1959

Today we'll be dealing with an Oscar year that set an insurmountable record; it has been equalled twice since (in 1997 and in 2003), but it hasn't been broken yet.

The 1959 Academy Awards was a chariot race between sex and religion - the only two things profitable on screen that year. Otto Preminger, a director who would often rock the Hollywood boat, came up with Anatomy Of A Murder, a film whose first headlines came when Lana Turner left the production. "I'll get an unknown and make her a new Lana Turner," vowed Preminger, and he cast Lee Remick as the wife who claims to have been raped by the man her husband is accused of murdering. When the film, starring James Stewart as the murderer's attorney and film newcomer George C. Scott as the prosecutor, opened in July, Time called it "a courtroom melodrama less concerned with murder than with anatomy." The film was controversial: Mayor Daley banned it in Chicago. Duke Ellington composed the score and Saul Bass designed the wonderful title sequence:

Preminger was the star of yet another controversy: he announced that blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo would be writing the screenplay for his next movie, Exodus. With this act, amplified by Kirk Douglas' followup invitation to Trumbo to work on Spartacus, Preminger practically nulled the infamous McCarthy blacklist.

Another film that was censored, this time in Kansas, was Billy Wilder masterful transsexual farce Some Like It Hot. It wasn't the cross-dressing that bothered the censors, but some of the intimate scenes between Tony Curtis and Marilyn Monroe. This, despite the fact that Curtis had stated that kissing Monroe "was like kissing Hitler." No love lost there.

The film, however, was a box-office smash and a critics' darling. Rightly so: it's one of the best comedies of all-time.

Another film that shocked morally upright citizens and was banned in Atlanta, was British drama Room At The Top. The Saturday Review commented, "Its characters swear, curse, connive, commit adultery like recoginizable (and not altogether unlikeable) human beings. And the effect is startling."

The two leads were thrust in the public eye: Laurence Harvey, a British-Jewish actor born in Lithuania and raised in South Africa was immediately signed to star opposite Elizabeth Taylor in Butterfield 8 and opposite John Wayne in Alamo. Simone Signoret, a French-Jewish actress born in Germany, became a popular figure around town when she accompanied husband Yves Montand to Hollywood so that he could make Let's Make Love with Marilyn Monroe. Both actors were magnificent in the film, as is evident in this scene:

Speaking of John Wayne, he wasn't at all happy with the morality of Tennessee Williams' play Suddenly, Last Summer, and its transition into film by Joseph Mankiewicz, starring Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. "I don't intend to see it," Wayne announced. "The subject matter is too distasteful to be put on a screen designed to entertain a family - or any member of a decent family." The critics disagreed: Taylor was awarded a Golden Globe for her performance, while Mike Connolly said that "Suddenly, Last Summer seems a cinch to Oscarate Kate Hepburn opposite that other Hepburn."

That other Hepburn was Audrey, who played a troubled nun in The Nun's Story, Fred Zinnemann's drama that became one of the year's top five grossing films. Both Zinnemann and Hepburn were awarded by the New York Film Critics, and the film's Oscar chances looked very good. Among the possible nominations was Franz Waxman's impressive score:

Catholicism wasn't the only faith on view. George Stevens got reverential reviews for The Diary Of Anne Frank, based on the best-selling book. The young leads, Millie Perkins, Richard Beymer and Diane Baker got their fair share of attention, but it was a couple of older actors that received the most plaudits: comedian Ed Wynn who had been making a comeback in dramatic parts, and especially Shelley Winters, who was successfully navigating the process of turning from lead to character actress. Multi-Oscar winner Alfred Newman had written the film's score:

MGM was struggling to remain solvent when the unholy success Paramount had in 1956 with The Ten Commandments inspired it to redo its most profitable Biblical spectacle, Ben Hur. MGM assigned producer Sam Zimbalist, the man who made Quo Vadis, and picked Charlton Heston, The Ten Commandments' Moses, as the lead. Esteemed director William Wyler was chosen to direct, and the crew headed for Rome for 10 months of filming. Mike Connolly reminded them: "MGM's future rides on the success or failure of Ben Hur." No pressure.

MGM was worried when word came that producer Zimbalist had collapsed and died from the pressure of keeping the superproduction under control. Also at least five screenwriters had worked on the screenplay, among them Gore Vidal, who added a gay undercurrent in Ben Hur's relationship with Messala. Stephen Boyd was told of the direction of his character, but Wyler decided not to tell Heston: "Don't ever tell Chuck what it's all about or he'll fall apart."

MGM needn't have worried: when Ben Hur premiered, the Hollywood Reporter's headline was "Ben Hur: Extraordinary, of greater dimension than any film of our time." The New York Film Critics went and named it their Best Picture. The pageant yanked MGM out of the hole, breaking box office records everywhere. One scene that was singled out for its virtuosity was the chariot race scene. That, however, wasn't directed by Wyler, but rather by a young Italian who was an uncredited second unit director: Sergio Leone. The monumental score was by Miklos Rozsa:

The Nominations

Ben Hur led the nominations with 12: Best Picture, Director, Actor for Heston, Supporting Actor for Welsh actor Hugh Griffith playing an Arab, Adapted Screenplay, Music: Original Score, Art Direction, Costumes, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, and Visual F/X. The Diary Of Anne Frank and The Nun's Story followed with 8 nominations each. They were both nominated for Best Picture, Director, Music: Original Score, and Cinematography. Anne Frank was also nominated for Best Supporting Actor and Actress (Wynn and Winters), Art Direction, and Costumes. The Nun's Story was also nominated for Best Actress (Hepburn), Adapted Screenplay, Editing, and Sound.

Anatomy Of A Murder received 7 nominations, but none for its rebel director, Otto Preminger. These were: Best Picture, Actor for James Stewart, two Supporting Actor nominations, one for newcomer George C. Scott, and one for veteran Arthur O'Connell, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography, and Editing. Room At The Top and Some Like It Hot received 6 nominations each. Room At The Top got Best Picture, Director, Actor for Harvey, Actress for Signoret, Supporting Actress for Hermione Baddeley, and Adapted Screenplay. Some Like It Hot got Best Director, Actor for Jack Lemmon, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Costumes, and Cinematography.

Suddenly, Last Summer managed to get two Best Actress nominations, for both Hepburn and Taylor, as well as one for Art Direction.

One of the year's highest grossing pictures, the romantic comedy Pillow Talk starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson, managed to get 5 nominations: Best Actress for Doris Day, Supporting Actress for Thelma Ritter, Original Screenplay, Art Direction, and Music: Original Score for Frank De Vol:

The fifth nominee for the Best Actor category was veteran Paul Muni in an inspired performance in The Last Angry Man. The fifth nominee for the Supporting Actor category was Robert Vaughn, for the Paul Newman vehicle The Young Philadelphians, while the Supporting Actress category was completed with two nominations from the same movie: the Lana Turner-starring remake of Imitation Of Life. They were Susan Kohner and Juanita Moore.

The Original Screenplay nominees were stellar: except for two well-written but standard Hollywood comedies (Pillow Talk and Operation Petticoat), the other three were among the best films of all time: Ernest Lehman for Hitchcock's masterpiece North By Northwest (it was also nominated for Art Direction and Editing), Ingmar Bergman for Wild Strawberries and François Truffaut with Marcel Moussy for The 400 Blows.

The Foreign Language category was all European: although Black Orpheus (Orfeu Negro) was a movie set in Brazil, it was a Brazilian, French, and Portuguese co-production, and it was France that submitted the film to the Oscars. Here's the theme, because it's a classic:

The other four nominees was a strong anti-war film from Germany (The Bridge), an anti-war dark comedy from Italy (The Great War, by Mario Monicelli, starring Alberto Sordi, Vittorio Gassman and Silvana Mangano), the adventures of a country doctor in Village By The River from the Netherlands, and the adventures of a young boy of color in Denmark's Boy Of Two Worlds.

In The Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, except for Ben Hur, The Diary Of Anne Frank, The Nun's Story, and Pillow Talk, there was Ernest Gold for On The Beach, the all-star vehicle about life in post-nuclear Australia:

The Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture nominees were:

André Previn and Ken Darby for Porgy and Bess:

Leith Stevens for The Five Pennies:

Nelson Riddle and Joseph J. Lilley for Li'l Abner:

Lionel Newman for Say One for Me:

George Bruns for Sleeping Beauty:

Finally, here are the nominees in the Best Original Song category:

High Hopes from A Hole in the Head – Music: Jimmy Van Heusen • Lyrics: Sammy Cahn:

The Best of Everything from The Best of Everything • Music: Alfred Newman • Lyrics: Sammy Cahn:

The Five Pennies from The Five Pennies • Music and lyrics: Sylvia Fine:

The Hanging Tree from The Hanging Tree • Music: Jerry Livingston • Lyrics: Mack David:

Strange Are the Ways of Love from The Young Land • Music: Dimitri Tiomkin • Lyrics: Ned Washington:

Eligible songs that failed to be nominated included a couple of songs that we've already played, Pillow Talk and Say One For Me. Also: Beloved Infidel from Beloved Infidel:

Gidget from Gidget:

Happy Anniversary from Happy Anniversary:

The Winners

Ben Hur won by a landslide: 11 wins out of 12 nominations, the most Oscars awarded ever to a single film, a record that was equalled 38 years later by Titanic and then again by The Lord Of The Rings: Return Of The King, but hasn't been broken yet. The only award that Ben Hur didn't get was the one for Adapted Screenplay: that went to Room At The Top, which also scored for Simone Signoret, one of the very few French actresses ever to win an Oscar. Original Screenplay didn't go to one of the three nominated masterpieces, but went to Pillow Talk instead. Oh, well...

Shelley Winters got the Supporting Actress Award, Anne Frank also getting Best Black & White Art Direction and Cinematography. Black & White Costumes went to Some Like It Hot. Orfeu Negro won Best Foreign Film for France, and Porgy And Bess won Scoring of a Musical Picture.

The Best Original Song award went to High Hopes. It was the second of three awards in 7 years for Jimmy Van Heusen and Sammy Cahn, and it was their weakest (they also had one more award each for previously working with other people). It was a weak year for film songs in general, but awarding a song that borders on novelty is not the best solution. Which song would have been my choice? That's a tough question, as I'm not particularly attached to any of them. Possibly The Best Of Everything because I like Johnny Mathis. Otherwise, Gidget, for the beautiful men in swimsuits in the video. Shallow, I know...